I am trying to reduce LED light intensity of buttons as I find everything way too bright and annoying for my eyes. In the manual, I found how to adjust LCD panel brightness, but nothing on LED lights. I guess it is not possible to do it through the setup. Any other solutions or ideas? I tried dimming some lights with permanent black marker, but it makes very little difference.

There is no simple way to reduce the LED intensity on your Kronos. I am glad to read I was not the only person to think the strength of the white LEDs was too strong depending on lighting.

My solution to this was a hardware mod : adding colors to the LEDs not only to reduce their intensity but also to help me see/decode what is going on and what I'm doing with the various functions and control modes, etc. This mod is entirely reversible but it is rather difficult to do since you have to disassemble your unit quite a bit, etc. I only recommend it for people who are used to handle delicate electronics components like PCBs, etc. And of course only once your Kronos warranty expires.

What you would need basically is a set of color acetates for camera lighting. I chose a set of 20 colors online at only 20$ and selected the 10 best out of the kit. You don't need big gel sheets as the area to cover is quite small and those small LEDs don't generate much heat, so it's safe. But one needs lots of patience to disassemble lots of things in order to reach those two main PCBs. Took me about 10 hours to do the whole thing.

Me too. I find the LEDs on the Kronos have a definite masking effect on the legibility of the labels printed next to the buttons.

Not a great fan of daytime running lights, either, and the LEDs on the Kronos illustrate rather well why DRLs are bad for road safety.

On the Kronos original and the X, LED output is concentrated in a direction perpendicular to the top panel, so when playing the keyboard sitting down, the LED brightness isn't a problem. For live playing standing up, tilting the keyboard back a bit helps. Is this also true for the Kronos 2?

LED button lights are way too bright I'm surprised they would allow that. I can't even look at the button directly as they are way too bright. It was an idiotic design scheme and I'm surprised that they didn't catch that before overall production. I noticed that the first minute I powered up the Kronos.

I wish they had an option to reduce the LED light shining directly into your retina.

Our retinas close ( like an aperture) when exposed to intense light. SuNlight , for example.

We suppose there are some who are more sensitive to forms of light.

I don't recall reading in what environment do the LEDs become an annoyance.
Such as daylight/home studio or gigging at night in a club, etc etc.

When my retina specialist saw my K1, he did not feel the LED's were especially intense. In my home studio, normal daylight thru windows.

Could be on certain models, the LED intensity varies.

After 7 yrs, if this was a large and overall issue, I believe Korg would have
addressed it._________________Kronos 88. nanoPAD2. Roland FA-07, MBP, UR44
Achieve your musical dreams https://soundcloud.com/user-898236994

It's been the case here from day one of using a Kronos, that the LEDs seem too bright when looking straight at them from above when in an artificially lit studio. Other players have remarked about them, too. When sitting down to play, and off-axis to the "main beam" and in reasonably bright rooms, it's not really been a problem, but in subdued lighting conditions, even being off-axis can be an issue.

Light has, of course, been a strong evolutionary driving force, so it's no surprise that our eyes are able to adapt to bright light, as GregC says. However, there are two, and possibly more forces at play here. The first comes from the fact that light acts as a strong visual attractor, something that has become wired deep into our visual system in evolutionary terms. It is clear, from analysing the effects of spending time in dark, and not so dark places, that a relatively bright source of light in a darker field, strongly draws the eye to it - this is the distracting effect, the drawing of the eye away from other objects in the visual field, be they keyboard controls, or other road users in the DRL case. It may not seem obvious at times, but is subliminal, and undoubtedly there. The second is the visual masking effect, which has its basis in the fundamental primary image processing that is done by the retinal cells. Images of bright lights focussed on the retina, have an inhibitory effect on neurones carrying signals from adjacent retinal cone cells, causing objects, angularly close to the bright source, to become indistinct. This can easily be exemplified by putting a piece of card in front of the Kronos' LEDs whilst viewing them "face-on", and observing how much more distinct the writing becomes on the front panel when the LEDs are masked. A third effect, which may also become significant, depending on ambient light levels, is Rayeigh scattering. This is influenced by the fourth power of the light frequency (or the fourth root of the wavelength), so blue light (abundant in Kronos' white LEDs) is much, much more strongly scattered (in the region of 16 times more so) than red light (the reason why the sky is blue, sunsets are red, and why we can't see stars in daylight). A fourth effect is ocular, or Mie/Debye scattering, which becomes more significant in the eye with age, and can also degrade the retinal image.

It's been the case here from day one of using a Kronos, that the LEDs seem too bright when looking straight at them from above when in an artificially lit studio. Other players have remarked about them, too. When sitting down to play, and off-axis to the "main beam" and in reasonably bright rooms, it's not really been a problem, but in subdued lighting conditions, even being off-axis can be an issue.

Light has, of course, been a strong evolutionary driving force, so it's no surprise that our eyes are able to adapt to bright light, as GregC says. However, there are two, and possibly more forces at play here.

The first comes from the fact that light acts as a strong visual attractor, something that has become wired deep into our visual system in evolutionary terms. It is clear, from analysing the effects of spending time in dark, and not so dark places, that a relatively bright source of light in a darker field, strongly draws the eye to it - this is the distracting effect, the drawing of the eye away from other objects in the visual field, be they keyboard controls, or other road users in the DRL case. It may not seem obvious at times, but is subliminal, and undoubtedly there. The second is the visual masking effect, which has its basis in the fundamental primary image processing that is done by the retinal cells. Images of bright lights focussed on the retina, have an inhibitory effect on neurones carrying signals from adjacent retinal cone cells, causing objects, angularly close to the bright source, to become indistinct.

This can easily be exemplified by putting a piece of card in front of the Kronos' LEDs whilst viewing them "face-on", and observing how much more distinct the writing becomes on the front panel when the LEDs are masked. A third effect, which may also become significant, depending on ambient light levels, is Rayeigh scattering. This is influenced by the fourth power of the light frequency (or the fourth root of the wavelength), so blue light (abundant in Kronos' white LEDs) is much, much more strongly scattered (in the region of 16 times more so) than red light (the reason why the sky is blue, sunsets are red, and why we can't see stars in daylight). A fourth effect is ocular, or Mie/Debye scattering, which becomes more significant in the eye with age, and can also degrade the retinal image.

.

excellent and thoughtful post. I touched on environment and view perspective.

For myself, I sit back when I play . A habit and a way to get at 88 keys at any point in in time. When needed, I tend to focus on the LCD which 'centralizes' my field of vision.
Finally, I perform on my K in a moderate lit home studio with natural sunlight
streaming i. I think these factors contribute to why I have zero issue with the LED's strength. I never directly hover over them. And more physiology- with long arms, I extend to press buttons.

I seem to repeat this- context is important. While there are going to be similarities eventually, knowing and having context is important._________________Kronos 88. nanoPAD2. Roland FA-07, MBP, UR44
Achieve your musical dreams https://soundcloud.com/user-898236994